Searching for Alternative Facts

Analyzing Scriptural Inference in Conservative News Practices

Francesca Tripodi

Published 05.16.18

Searching for Alternative Facts is an ethnographic account drawn directly from Dr. Francesca Tripodi’s research within upper-middle class conservative Christian* communities in Virginia in 2017. Dr. Tripodi uses Christian practices of Biblical interpretation as a lens for understanding the relationship between so-called “alternative” or “fake news” sources and contemporary conservative political thought.

Illustration by Jim Cooke

“They critically interrogate media messages in the same way they approach the Bible, focusing on specific passages and comparing what they read, see, and hear to their lived experiences.

I term this media interrogation process scriptural inference.”– Francesca Tripodi

Key findings include:

On media consumption and interpretation:

The author finds that self-identified conservatives in this study consume a wide variety of news sources–but then juxtapose what they read, see, and hear with other documents, including presidential speeches and the Constitution.

Since these communities rely on non-neutral search engines like Google to “fact check” the news, algorithms that are used to serve up information mayhelp create or reinforce ideological biases in newsgathering.

On “fake news” and ideological bias:

Services like Google and YouTube can unintentionally expose individuals who consider themselves “mainline conservatives” to more radical content, as the author finds that “simple syntax differences” in search terms yield different algorithmic recommendations.

Nonprofit media company PragerU, for example, is identified as a purveyor of bite-size content formats and sophisticated marketing strategies that aim to reinforce distrust of mainstream media.

This work comes from Data & Society’s Media Manipulation Initiative, which examines how groups use the participatory culture of the internet to turn the strengths of a free society into vulnerabilities.

*For a full explication of these self-identifications and definitions in the context of this study, please refer to the full methods section in Appendix A as well as the report copy; specifically, page 8 and the footnotes on pages 5, 6, and 8.